By Mike Stone and Chris Sanders
WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Friday it had reached agreements with seven AI companies to deploy their advanced capabilities on the Defense Department’s classified networks as it seeks to broaden the range of AI providers working across the military.
The statement excludes Anthropic, which has been in dispute with the Pentagon over guardrails on the military’s use of its artificial intelligence tools.
The Pentagon labeled the AI startup, which is widely used across the Defense Department, a supply-chain risk earlier this year, barring its use by the Pentagon and its contractors.
SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, several of which already work with the Pentagon, will be integrated into its secret and top-secret network environments, providing more military access to their products for use on sensitive topics, the Pentagon said in a statement. The lesser-known Reflection AI, which raised $2 billion in October, is backed by 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm in which Donald Trump Jr. is a partner and investor.
Since the Pentagon deemed Anthropic’s products a “supply-chain risk” in March and the two sides became embroiled in a lawsuit, the military has expressed increasing interest in AI startups.
FASTER PROCESS
Since the blow-up, newer AI entrants have said the military has sped up the process of incorporating them onto secret and top-secret data levels to less than three months. The process previously took 18 months or longer.
By expanding AI services offered to troops, who use it for planning, logistics, targeting and in other ways to streamline huge operations and perform more quickly, the Pentagon said in its statement it will avoid “vendor lock,” a likely nod to its overdependence on Anthropic or other dominant service providers.
Pentagon staffers, former officials and IT contractors who work closely with the U.S. military have told Reuters they were reluctant to give up Anthropic’s AI tools, which they view as superior to alternatives, despite orders to remove them over the next six months.
AI has become increasingly important for the U.S. military. The Pentagon’s main AI platform, GenAI.mil, has been used by over 1.3 million Defense Department personnel, the agency noted in its release, after five months of operation.
Google, which the Pentagon already uses, has signed a deal enabling the Defense Department to use its AI models for classified work, a source told Reuters this week.
ANTHROPIC STILL SEEN AS RISK
Defense Department Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael told CNBC on Friday that Anthropic remained a supply-chain risk. But he said Mythos, the company’s AI model with advanced cyber capabilities that created a stir among U.S. officials and corporate America over its ability to supercharge hackers, was a “separate national security moment.”
While numerous companies and public and private entities have gained access to a Mythos preview product to help secure their IT infrastructure against future cyberattacks, it is unclear if the Pentagon is part of that program.
U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that Anthropic was “shaping up” in the eyes of his administration, opening the door for the AI company to reverse its blacklisting at the Pentagon.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Mike Stone, David Jeans and Chris Sanders; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Chizu Nomiyama, Tomasz Janowski, Rod Nickel)
Comments